


in secret, between the shadow and the soul

by WISHBONE



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Pre-Kerberos Mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 21:50:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11609637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WISHBONE/pseuds/WISHBONE
Summary: One minute they’re speeding up the steep rise of a red dune and in the next they’re soaring, soaring, off the edge of a cliff Shiro never saw coming. For a moment, infinite in its transience, they are weightless together. Two boys and a bike, suspended like stars before gravity remembers itself, their stomachs swooping as Keith manoeuvres them to land in a sequence which moments ago, Shiro would have told you was impossible.Vignettes from a love story





	in secret, between the shadow and the soul

**Author's Note:**

> Love Sonnet XVII - Neruda  
>   
>  _I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,_  
>  _or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off._  
>  _I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_  
>  _in secret, between the shadow and the soul._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _I love you as the plant that never blooms_  
>  _but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;_  
>  _thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,_  
>  _risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _I love you with knowing how, or when, or from where._  
>  _I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;_  
>  _so I love you because I know no other way_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _than this: where I does not exist, nor you,_  
>  _so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,_  
>   
>  _so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep._  
> 

#### 

_three_

  
  


Shiro’s been escaping to this particular corner of the Garrison’s rooftop for nigh on two years. In that time, he’s never met another person up here. He didn’t think anyone else actually knew the path through the maze of service doors and maintenance corridors it took to find the almost invisible roof hatch which leads here. 

Apparently, Shiro was wrong.

There is a boy crouched at the furthest corner of the platform, almost hidden by a huge air vent. He sits so close to the edge that if he moved even an inch forward or either side of him, he would surely fall. Even from this distance Shiro can see the tension that suffuses his body. His shoulders are pulled tight up near his ears and shake with constant, miniscule tremors, as if emerging despite his attempts to hold himself still. His head is dropped deep down between his knees, his face completely obscured. He hasn’t heard Shiro’s entrance onto the roof. Worry twists low and tight in Shiro’s gut. 

He takes a few hesitant steps closer while wondering how best to approach so as not to startle the other boy, indecision and concern making his feet feel like lead. He’s still deciding on how best to proceed when the other boy speaks, voice breathy and strained.

“You can stop gaping,” he says without raising his head and with shoulders still shaking, “I know you’re there.” 

Shiro swallows his own surprise and makes himself approach. Now that he’s closer, he can make out the single stripe on the boy’s cuffs which mark him as a first year cadet, can see that the tremors which seemed to wrack his body are actually his rapid, shallow breaths. 

“Are you okay?” asks Shiro.

At this the boy raises his head and laughs, or tries to, but the sound seems to get caught in his throat. There’s a cut over his right eyebrow still bleeding slowly, the blood congealing in a sticky mess down the side of his face. It’s stained the collar of his uniform the colour of rust. “Peachy,” he gasps, “Absolutely peachy.”

Shiro considers this for a moment. “Can I come closer?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Not as if I can stop you.”

Far from a ringing endorsement as it is, Shiro approaches. He sits next to the boy and watches out of the corner of his eye as he tenses. “You’re having a panic attack,” says Shiro matter-of-factly, taking in the boys clenched fists and audible gasps. It’s a wonder that the he’s had been able to get any words out at all, so laboured is his breathing. Shiro gets the feeling that sheer stubbornness was the moving factor here, but it seems finally to have run out. As it is, the boy still manages to turn a level glare upon him, somehow conveying all at once that he is well aware of this fact and that Shiro is a fool for even stating it. 

Shiro makes an abrupt decision and grabs for the boy’s hand, placing it on his chest and holding it there when he tries to pull away. “Just-, just breathe with me, match your breaths with mine.”

The boy looks at him incredulously for a long moment - breath seemingly entirely stopped - before his eyes drop down to where Shiro is holding his palm against his chest. He watches the steady rise and fall of it with wide eyes, disbelief paling his face. Still, he doesn’t pull away and eventually, _eventually,_ \- slow like the melting of ice - his own breathing begins to steady, the harsh gasps of it softening to something more even and controlled. Shiro watches the tension in the boy’s shoulders uncoil like the fall of a curtain, the warmth of his hand undeniable where it rests on Shiro’s chest. He begins to talk break the silence.

“I’m Takashi, but everyone calls me Shiro, I’m an upperclass cadet. I didn’t think anyone else knew about this place but-” 

“I know,” interrupts the boy, his voice steadier now that his breathing is more under control, “I know who you are. Takashi Shirogane, boy wonder.” He looks directly, unflinchingly at Shiro when he says this, and Shiro has the startling realisation that under his bloodied face, the boy’s eyes are almost purple, a deep plum in the last light of the day. Behind him, the sky is nearly the same colour as the desert sand, the view gone sanguine as the last of the sun dips behind the horizon. It paints a remarkable picture. For a long, drawn-out moment, Shiro is enchanted. 

The boy begins to pull his hand away and Shiro snaps out of his trance. He shakes his head to clear it before reaching into his pocket for his handkerchief. “Here,” he says, hoping his voice doesn’t betray him, “looks like you could use this.”

The boy snorts, a sudden, ungraceful sound that seems to have shocked him as much as it has Shiro. “Seriously?” he says, voice bubbling with poorly stifled amusement, “Who the hell carries around a handkerchief these days?” Still, he takes the proffered square of cloth and abruptly unfolds from his seat to retrieve a backpack from where its propped next to the air vent. He digs around in it for a moment before coming up with a water bottle which he uses to wet the fabric before gingerly swiping at his bloodied face. The cloth comes away red almost instantly, leaving behind blood-stained drops of water to meander down his neck.

Shiro swallows and drags his eyes away. “And you are...?” he leads, when a name is not forthcoming. 

“Keith,” the boy mutters, still dabbing at his face, “Keith Kogane.”

“Keith,” says Shiro, tasting the name for on his tongue before familiarity jolts through him, “Wait, Kogane? As in the kid who’s currently working his way through all my sim records?”

Keith stiffens with his hand half raised to his face, posture gone tight and defensive in an instant. “Yeah,” he admits eventually, “yeah.”

Shiro parses this for a moment before coming to a conclusion. “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be,” he says, watching Keith’s face swing to face his in shock. Shiro doesn’t even try to stifle the grin that pushes its way onto his lips. “Really, it’s a wonder your feet can even reach the pedals.”

Keith gapes at him, all opened mouth disbelief for a moment before he comes back to himself. “Yeah?” he says, laughter suffusing his voice, “All that I still managed to shave 3 seconds off your scenario 42.”

Shiro barks a laugh at this, eminently pleased. Out of the corner of his eye he catches the beginnings of a smile play around Keith lips too.  
  
  
  
  
  


#### 

_two_

  
  


Keith says, “Just trust me,” and Shiro bends to him like reeds in the wind. 

This is far from the first time he’s been on Keith’s hoverbike, but it’s the first time Keith has taken him on quite such a precarious route. Every landmark is unfamiliar, the very definition of off-road. Still, Shiro just tightens his hands on Keith’s waist, studiously ignoring the twist of longing in his chest that accompanies the action. He feels Keith nod to himself, acknowledging the movement for the acquiescence it is, and then he’s off again, bike roaring as he accelerates, expertly navigating each hurdle the desert throws at him. 

Shiro loses himself to the ride, feels every turn in the subtle press of Keith’s hips, can barely think over the shudder of the motor’s vibrations deep in his bones. One minute they’re speeding up the steep rise of a red dune and in the next they’re soaring, _soaring_ , off the edge of a cliff Shiro never saw coming. For a moment, infinite in its transience, they are weightless together. Two boys and a bike, suspended like stars before gravity remembers itself, their stomachs swooping as Keith manoeuvres them to land in a sequence which moments ago, Shiro would have told you was impossible. 

Keith brings them to a halt, breath coming hard and fast, his knuckles white where they grip the handlebars. Shiro just laughs and laughs, helpless to contain it. Some nameless part of him soars when he not only hears but feels Keith begin to laugh too, the tremors of his amusement impossible to miss in all the places they touch. Keith is a wonder, a miracle that Shiro will never get used too. Shiro looks at Keith and it’s like looking at the stars, at something both unreachable and inevitable. A walking contradiction of the most brilliant kind. Shiro has to clamp his mouth against the urge to tell him so. 

“So what,” he says instead, laughter still caught in his throat, “you brought me out here to show off your defying the laws of physics?”

Keith turns and smiles at him, one of those rare creatures, bright and open and unselfconscious in a way that Keith so rarely ever is. “No,” he says, voice soft, “not quite. There’s still a little bit to go. Hold on.”

Shiro does as he’s told, tightening his arms obediently. In the seconds before the bike comes to life under Keith’s hands he cannot help but lean close to Keith’s ear and whisper, “Your-” he starts, stops. “Keith, that was amazing.” 

The ground flies away from under them in a blur, Keith slicing a path through the desert with every indication of effortlessness. Shiro, trusting Keith entirely, turns to watch the last flash of light as the sun disappears behind the horizon, the sky all purple fire. To him, the dusk will always belong to Keith, a boy so eerily at home in the liminal light. After their first meeting all those months ago, Shiro began to find Keith on that rooftop more nights than not, all casual indifference to Shiro’s presence at first. Later that indifference had given way to a fragile trust which soon became a fast friendship which extended beyond clandestine rooftop meetings. Still, the rooftop at dusk, now forever associated with the boy in front of him, holds a special fondness in Shiro’s heart.

When they finally do begin to slow, the sky is a deep blue, all traces of the sunset gone. Keith swings the bike around a final bend and from behind it, the dark silhouette of a structure emerges. Keith pulls to a halt in front of it. This close, Shiro can see that it is wood panelled and decrepit shack, like something out of an old western. Keith is already swinging off the hoverbike and mounting the porch, his feet falling confident and familiar, like he’s been here many times before. He turns to Shiro as he reaches the door, rolling his eyes heavenwards when he sees him still seated on the bike. 

“Come _on_ , Takashi.”

Shiro scrambles off the bike, jolting at the sound of his given name on Keith’s lips, all fond exasperation. It’s only when he joins Keith at the door that he catches the slight tension in his shoulders, the tell tale clench of his jaw. Keith is _nervous_ and Shiro, for the life of him, cannot imagine why. 

Keith hesitates with his hand on the doorknob, and to Shiro’s surprise, he pulls a key from his jacket pocket before fitting it smoothly into the lock. In the quiet of the desert, the sounds of the lock’s tumblers falling rings loud. Still, Keith makes no move to open the door, seemingly frozen. Shiro hesitates before placing his hand on his shoulder, feeling the tightness wound there.

“Keith...” he begins, before he is interrupted.

“I found this place ages ago. Ages. Before I even knew you. I’ve searched on all the databases but there’s no record of it anywhere. Whoever built it is long gone. I… I’ve been cleaning it up. Waterproofing, changed the locks.”

Keith shrugs, colour dusting high on his cheeks. Shiro cannot help but tighten his hand on Keith’s shoulder in reassurance. The move seems to harden something within Keith and he determinedly turns the handle, pushing the door open and following it past the threshold in one smooth motion. The movement forces Shiro’s hand to fall away from Keith’s shoulder. For a moment, Shiro feels hurt, shrugged off. His biggest fear - that he’s let his feelings get the best of him, has crossed some invisible line, some line that wouldn’t have been crossed if his heart didn’t orbit Keith like a satellite - looms like a spectre.

Before the feeling can take hold, Keith reaches behind himself to grab Shiro’s hand and pull him through the door. Absent the light of the moon to guide them the inside of the shack is pitch black. Shiro makes his way through it only by virtue of Keith’s hand still gripping his, guiding him infallibly. They come to a stop and Shiro hears Keith fiddling with something before light floods the room. An old oil lamp, Shiro realises, unable to recall ever seeing one outside of the the old movies his parents still sometimes watch.

In the warm light of the flame Keith’s shack is fully revealed and Shiro is gobsmacked, speechless. It’s a home, or at least the beginnings of one. The place is very much still a work in progress, one entire wall looks like it's held up by crumbling plasterboard and faith alone, old electronics are piled haphazardly in the corner. But the places Keith has worked on are obvious too. There’s a wooden counter behind them, which Keith has oiled and polished until it shines. He’s re-panelled the wood on the walls behind it and installed a sink. A portable burner stove sits at one end, completes makeshift kitchen. There’s a couch, old but clean, pressed against the wall under a window covered in threadbare curtains. Through a crack in a door on the opposite wall Shiro can make out a second room, a bed just visible. 

Everything is so lovingly cared for, treated like it's something precious, even though it's all very obviously second hand. Shiro feels all in a daze. Keith treats all his Garrison assigned property with a carelessness bordering on contempt. Shiro thinks the incongruity probably says something but he’s unable to parse meaning in the moment. He wonders where Keith ever found the time, how he’s managed to sneak out enough to do all this.

He can’t help but move forward through the room, running his hands over everything which so clearly bear the marks of Keith’s affection, his hard work. The counter is smooth under his fingers, the window panes clean and free of dust. The couch, though worn, is covered in cushions, a throw blanket folded neatly at one end. When he turns, Shiro finds that Keith is watching him, his eyes dark and his expression inscrutable. There is a gravity to this moment, a meaning which prickles under Shiro’s skin. Shiro thinks back to the feeling of weightless suspension on the bike with Keith as they launched over the cliff. Thinks of the swoop of his stomach as he waited for the laws of physics to make themselves known. Thinks, _this feels the same._

_This feels the same._

Shiro lets his hand come to rest of the plasterboard of the unfinished wall, grit already chalking his palm. “It looks like you could use some help,” he says, and his voice doesn’t waver, but it's a near thing.

Keith is silent for a long time, his gaze like a physical touch as it searches Shiro’s face. “Yes,” he says, eventually. “Yes.”

  
  
  
  
  


#### 

_one_

  
  


Shiro winces as Keith swings the sledgehammer, the whole shack shaking as the plasterboard tears like wet paper. Dust plumes around them, the motes catching in the light of the oil lamp. Shiro coughs through the feeling of it coating his throat and tries again. 

“Keith, _Keith_ , please just stop for one second.” 

It’s as if his words fall on deaf ears, Keith just readies himself for another swing, swiping sweaty hair off his face and hauling the hammer onto his shoulder. Shiro braces himself for the impact and when it comes, the strike like the clap of thunder, he runs forward to grab the sledgehammer out of Keith’s hands before he can swing again. 

A wordless snarl escapes Keith’s lips and he makes an abortive move to grab for the hammer before catching himself and turning determinedly away. It’s the closest Keith has come to acknowledging Shiro since he arrived and Shiro tries to ignore the way this hurts.

They’d announced the Kerboros mission a few hours ago. Ironically, Shiro had been one of the last people to hear the news. He’d been out all day leading a survival training exercise with the newest cadets in the desert and had only returned after dusk, exhausted and covered in red desert dust. Matt had caught him on his beeline towards the showers, his face lit with excitement.

Keith must have found out with the others. Shiro hadn’t been able to find him anywhere, dread settling like an anchor deep in his stomach until he’d thought to check the shack. When he’d arrived, all in a rush and with desert grime still clinging to his skin, Keith had been methodically demolishing their latest renovation progress, the once crumbling plasterboard wall that Shiro had stood before weeks ago, reinforced and freshly painted. 

Before him now, Keith has forced himself into a stillness eerie for a boy whose movements so often crackle with emotion. Still, Shiro can read the anger pouring off the line of his shoulders, cannot help even now, the twitch of his fingers, the urge to run his hand over that slope, to brush the shortest hairs at the nape of Keith’s neck.

“Keith,” he says, very softly now. Shiro wonders if Keith can hear the way his name becomes half plea half prayer on his lips. “Keith, please.”

Keith’s reply seems to escape from him against his will, his voice tight and barely more than a whisper, “You never told me you’d applied, I-, I had no idea you were planning to leave me.”

Shiro feels his stomach drop out from under him at Keith’s words, his mind taken back to that clear night on the porch of the shack, Keith eyes fixed on the stars, and Shiro’s eyes fixed on Keith as he confessed slowly, haltingly about the day his father had left and never come back. About years in the system. Facing the choice between joining the military or being homeless. His voice had been so flat, so void of emotion that he’d sounded like a stranger. It was only when Keith had raised his hand to trace Orion where it lit the sky, that Shiro had seen the tremble in his fingers and understood just how much the memories still haunted Keith.

Shiro’s tongue trips over his words, “It was before I’d even met you, almost a year ago now. I never… I never thought I would get it. A junior pilot, come on!” He laughs but it’s hollow and Keith seems to flinch at the sound.

Shiro tries again. “Keith,” he says “I didn’t think to mention it.” He doesn’t say anything about how he didn’t know how, not without disturbing the peace of this strange half-state they seemed to have found themselves in. Hadn’t known how to say _I may be going to the smallest moon of the furthest planet of our solar system and its a dream come true, a dream come true, I’ve wanted this, worked for this my whole life, except when I think about you it sounds like torture_ without admitting all the other stuff too; the way they’ve been each other’s most important person for months now; there in every crisis and quiet moment.

Shiro is in love with Keith, he knows this. Had admitted it very quietly to himself while watching Keith take on a simulator scenario that was supposed to be impossible to beat and win, teeth grit and eyes on fire. Looking like all the grace and power of a dying star was lighting him from within. Shiro is in love with Keith and he even thinks that maybe, Keith is in love with him, but now he’s leaving and Keith is crumbling before him and its so perfectly tragic Shiro knows he can’t possibly act on that knowledge, not now. “I didn’t think, I never expected to get in. I’d almost forgotten about it until I found out from Matt today. Please Keith, I swear.”

Keith doesn’t respond, but Shiro can see his throat working rapidly as he swallows, the soft tremors which wrack his body as he fights for control. Shiro lets the hammer clatter to the floor in favour of bringing his hands to Keith’s shoulder, right at the junction where his collarbone meets his neck. It’s a gamble, Shiro’s never certain whether Keith will allow the touch or rip himself away. This time he seems to have bet right, Keith is still under his hand, despite his pulse fluttering like a bird under Shiro’s fingers. Shiro thinks that means something. Means something the same way Keith showing him the shack all those months ago meant something. Means something the same way Keith looks at him sometimes means something, all certainty and faith.

Keith speaks in a language entirely without words, and Shiro can only hope, desperately, like a live thing in his chest, that he’s translating properly. He prays that he was right then - is right now - as he moves his right hand gently, achingly slow to the bolt of Keith’s jaw. Keith tenses but does not shy from it. Shiro cannot help the hitch in his breathing, the soaring of his heart, when between one moment and the next Keith leans ever so slightly into his touch, his brows drawn together, hiding his eyes in shadow. 

“ _Keith_ ," he breathes as he draws the other boy’s face up to meet his gaze. His chest feels like it’s cracking open when Keith’s expression crumbles before Shiro’s eyes. His hand comes up to grip Shiro’s as if to hold it tighter to his face. 

“You can’t leave me Shiro,” he whispers; a quiet, hopeless thing, “you can’t.”

Shiro feels all the air rush out of him, his chest aching under the weight of his regret. He bends forward, eyes pricking with unshed tears until their foreheads touch. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I have to.” Keith jerks in his hands, a sob escaping him. He tries to pull away but Shiro just holds tighter, feeling desperate and untethered and in love, in love, in love. “I’m leaving, but I will come back to you Keith, I swear to God. I’m coming back. I won’t leave you behind.”

Keith jerks under him again, properly crying now, and seems torn between pushing Shiro away and pushing further into his arms. Shiro won’t let him go, not now. Eventually it’s the latter that wins out, Keith pressing into Shiro’s chest as sobs wrack his body. Shiro’s arms come around him and Shiro thinks they may be the only thing holding Keith up. As the reality of months apart starts to settle into his bones, Shiro feels his own legs grow weak, his breath gone short. He walks them slowly backwards until his knees touch the couch and lets himself drop onto its cushions, pulling Keith with him as he goes so he settles almost on Shiro’s chest.

Sitting there, with everything he never knew he wanted in the curve of his arms, Shiro lets the grief come, his tears fall. He buries his face in the soft lengths of Keith’s hair, trying to memorise it’s smell - like mint and the desert at night; the precise speed of Keith’s heartbeat against his chest; each of his callouses where one of his palms is pressed flat against the thin fabric of Shiro’s shirt, right over his heart, the other gripping Shiro’s arm. 

The curve of his neck is wet where Keith is hiding his face and Shiro brings his hand to the nape of his neck and strokes, long slow movements like he has been yearning to for months. The delicate knob of Keith’s spine feels so fragile under his fingers. Shiro wants to kiss him, his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids. He bites his cheek against the urge thinks, _after. After._

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but Shiro only moves much, much later, when the desert has gone cold and utterly silent, and Keith’s breathing has evened out into the smooth pace of sleep. He grabs the blanket where it’s folded over the arm of the couch, settles down so that he’s lying with Keith’s weight on his chest, and drapes it over their tangled forms. 

He gives into the desire once, just once, to brush Keith’s bangs off his face and kiss the pale skin of his forehead, smoothed in sleep.

  
  
  
  
  


#### 

_zero_

  
  


Keith is shaking. The tremors start small in his fingertips, becoming more out of control as they rise to his shoulders, until it feels like his chest is rattling with the force of them. It’s difficult for him to breathe. He feels like a forest felled, a field razed, every part of him is crying out to give in to the urge to fall to his knees. Black spots are dotting the edge of his vision and he can’t hear a thing over the rush of blood in his ears - a tidal wave, a flood.

Shiro’s cockpit is empty. 

He’s gone. 

The other’s are turning to him now, have noticed the rapid, shallow rise and fall of his chest. Desperation and a curling dread claw their way up through his throat and escape in a low moan he is helpless to control.

_“Shiro…”_

His hands fall to the back of the chair to steady himself. His fingers grip the leather until his knuckles are white, as if if he presses hard enough he’ll be able to feel the imprint of Shiro in the seat. Allura is the first to approach him, her hand on his shoulder a distant weight, as if happening to somebody else’s body.

“Keith, you’ve got to _breathe_ , you’ve got to calm down, we’re going to find him.”

Keith would laugh, if he had any air to spare for doing so. Would say, _I’ve lost him once and it almost killed me. I can’t do this again. I can’t survive this feeling twice. Like half of me has gone, has been ripped away, he’s the only-_ before his mind can go further he’s being pushed down, down into Shiro’s seat, Lance coming to kneel in front of him. He reaches around and pulls off Keith’s helmet, his face fills Keith’s vision. For once his eyes are blankly serious, the laughter that always seems to pool behind their surface absent entirely.

“Keith,” he says, voice low and close as he takes Keith’s hand and lays it on top of his own suit’s chestplate, “breathe with me, come on buddy. Just follow my pace. In and out, right? In and out.”

Keith can only stare for a moment, mind flashing with the countless times Shiro has done the very same for him. His hand on Shiro’s chest, feeling the steady, relentless beat of his heart. Shiro’s hands gentle on his shoulders, his neck, curled around the bolt of his jaw, crouched close enough that his breath would break over Keith’s lips with each controlled exhale. Later, when he was calm, it was followed by Shiro’s lips. Keith’s whole chest aches with the memory, another broken moan escaping his lips as his eyes close unconsciously, head tipping back as grief threatens to overwhelm him. “I can’t-” he gasps, hitches, “I can’t, not again-”

“Keith! Hey, hey!” snaps Lance, clearly unwilling to let him retreat into himself. “Breathe with me man, come on, I know you can do this.” The hardness of his voice snaps something in Keith, breaks him away from the landslide of his thoughts. In that moment, Lance sounds like a leader, sounds twice his age, voice suffused with such authority that even a military school dropout like Keith is unable to resist. He starts to breathe, painfully, reluctantly, matching his breaths with the steady rise and fall of Lance’s chest. The metal of his suit is cold under Keith’s hands and he can’t feel Lance’s heartbeat. “That’s it buddy,” Lance murmurs, relief colouring his tone light, “That’s it.”

Slowly, slowly, the room around him resolves into focus again. The others are looking at him with concern etched deep on their faces. Pidge has tears in her eyes, her hands twisted in front of her, crescent moons in her skin where she’s pressed too hard. Hunk’s arms rest over her shoulders protectively, but Hunk himself looks like he’s about to collapse, his expression haunted. Keith looks at all of them, sees the grief heavy in their faces. 

Something crystallises within Keith, some buried resolve he had no idea he possessed. This time there are people who’ll look for Shiro, who won’t rest until they’ve found him. This is not an abandonment on Pluto’s furthest, smallest moon. His chest feels like a battlefield, every steady breath a clash of swords. It hurts, but Keith has always been at home in a knife fight. He pushes himself up from Shiro’s pilot seat, fighting the vertigo that momentarily overwhelms him. He thinks, _his seat was still warm._

He says, “We’re gonna find him. We- we _have_ to find him.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I chose the title because this particular Neruda poem seems to me to really capture the way Shiro loves. Simply, plainly, yet a force of nature.
> 
> These vignettes were part of a much larger work I had intended to get done before season 3 came out but unfortunately uni got the better of me this semester. I thought I'd publish these before I watch the new season and get the urge to revise the whole thing with all the new canon.
> 
> As ever, comments and criticisms are appreciated. You can also find me at [kogains.](https://kogains.tumblr.com)


End file.
